Nothing better demonstrates this than the present negation by advanced and doubtless sincere German thinkers of the very foundations of public morality and indeed of civilization. They have been led with Nietzsche to revile the Beatitudes and exalt the supremacy of cruelty over mercy. Indeed Treitschke in his lectures on _Politik_, which have become the gospel of Junkerdom, avowedly based his gospel of force upon the teaching of Machiavelli, for he points out that it was Machiavelli who first clearly saw that the State is power (_der Staat ist Macht_). Therefore "to care for this power is the highest moral duty of the State" and "of all political weaknesses that of feebleness is the most abominable and despicable; it is the sin against the holy spirit of politics." He therefore holds that the State as the ultimate good "cannot bind its will for the future over against other States," and that international treaties are therefore only obligatory "for such time as the State may find to be convenient." To enforce the will of the nation contrary to its own solemn promises and to increase its might, war is the appointed means. Both Treitschke and Moltke conceived it as "an ordinance set by God" and "one of the two highest functions" of the State. The doctrine is carried to the blasphemous conclusion that war is an ordinance of a just and merciful God; that, to quote Bernhardi, "it is a biological necessity" and that "the living God will see to it that war shall always recur as a terrible medicine for humanity." Therefore "might is at once the supreme right and the dispute as to what is right is decided by the arbitrament of war," which gives a "biologically just decision." This means that the 42 centimeter howitzer is more moral than a gun of smaller caliber and that the justice of God depends upon the superiority of Krupp to other ordnance manufacturers. Treitschke tells us, and the statement is quoted by Bernhardi with approval, that "the end all and be all of a state is power, and he who is not man enough to look this truth in the face should not meddle with politics." To this Bernhardi adds that the State's highest moral duty is to increase its power and in so doing "_the State is the sole judge of the morality of its own action. It is in fact above morality or, in other words whatever is necessary is moral._" Again we learn that the State must not allow any conventional sympathies to distract it from its object and that "conditions may arise which are more powerful than the most honorable intentions."